I will not write out the record of the next two weeks.  They seemed, as they passed, a thousand years; and yet, in looking back on them, they seem only like one terrible breathless night.  My aunt and I alone did all that was done for Annie.  There were whole days and whole nights during which she talked incessantly, sometimes with such subtle semblance of her own sweet self that we could hardly believe she did not know what she said; sometimes with such wild ravings that we shook in terror, and could not look at her nor at each other.  There were other days and nights through which she lay in a sleep, which seemed-no more like real sleep than the shrill voice of her ravings had seemed like her real voice.  These were most fearful of all.  Through all these days and nights, two men with white faces and folded arms walked up and down in the rooms below, or crouched on the thresholds of our doors, listening for sign or word from us.  One was Annie’s father, and the other was her lover, George Ware.  He was her second cousin, fifteen years older than she, and had loved her since the day she was one year old, when at the ceremony of her christening, he, a proud shy boy of sixteen, had been allowed to carry her up-stairs with her sweet name resting fresh and new on her little dewy forehead.  Ah, seldom does such love spring and grow and blaze on this earth as had warmed the very air around Annie from the moment of her birth.  George Ware was a man of rare strength, as this love showed; and with just such faithfulness as his faithfulness to Annie, he had loved and cared for his mother, who had been for twenty years a widow.  They lived on the outskirts of the town, in a small house almost buried in the heart of a pine wood.  The wood was threaded in all directions by miles of narrow paths which shone in the shaded sunlight as if they were satin-floored.  For nineteen years it had been George Ware’s joy to roam these paths with his cousin Annie; first, the baby whom he drew in her wicker wagon; next, the wayward little child who walked with stumbling steps and clung to his finger; next, the gay school-girl who brought all her perplexities and all her joys to be confided to him under the pines; next, the shyer and more silent maiden who came less often, but lingered helplessly until twilight made the fragrant aisles solemn and dim as cloisters; at last, the radiant, the child-like woman, the promised wife!

No winter could set a barrier across these pine-wood paths.  When the whole country about lay blocked and drifted, and half buried with snow, all these spicy foot-roads were kept clear and level, and ready for Annie’s feet.  Whole days of George Ware’s strength went into the work and the joy of doing this.  In open spaces where the snow had drifted deep, he wrought it into solid walls almost as high on either hand as Annie’s head.  In dark nooks, where the spreading pines and hemlocks lay low and wide, he tossed the snow into fantastic and weird masses on the right and left, and cleared great spaces where he knew the partridge-berry would be ready with a tiny scarlet glow to light up the spot.